Auburn University Senate Meeting

May 3, 2005

Dr. Conner Bailey, Chair: Good Afternoon, it's three o'clock. Russ Muntifering, can you hear me in the back? Good, present and accounted for. Senators, if you would please make sure that you have signed in. I-m going to call this meeting of the University Senate to order. Unfortunately, we do not have the March 8 minutes to the University Senate ready before review. We do have and have posted on the Senate web page the minutes for April 5^th. I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes. Rik Blumenthal second. Any additions or corrections to the minutes of April 5^th? Hearing none, I entertain a vote to approve. All in favor say Aye. Opposed like sign. Minutes are approved.

Dr. Richardson is with us today and I would like to invite Dr. Richardson to come forward at this time and speak to the Senate and non-Senators alike. While Dr. Richardson is coming forward, let me note he has an out-of-town engagement and will not be able to stay for the entire meeting, but I'm hoping there will be time after his remarks that he might be able to answer any questions that you have.

Dr. Ed Richardson, Interim President: Thank you, Conner. Again, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you. At first, the agenda. I do speak to a group of Auburn supporters that are supporting two of our colleges today in Montgomery so I'll need to leave fairly shortly after my presentation. I would offer two or three observations and then shield the questions that you might have.

We have been very fortunate, I think, in the legislative process and I feel very good about the results, although we will not know until next week, for the final agreements have been arrived at. I thought I would just give you a couple of items that I think are important within that legislative process that will serve us well in the future. You probably know that we've pushed initially for the supplemental appropriation which was to make up for the fringe benefits which were not afforded to higher education this year, and as we worked through that it became obvious about a month ago that we were going to need to develop a APlan B@. In that regard, we developed a Plan B that would be into continuing appropriation, which to me has more advantages than a one time appropriation. So what we did was increase a $5 million one time appropriation for continuing and added another 13 on top of that, which is indeed, on top of already a very generous budget for higher education, so we feel good that this will serve us well in the future and sets up a continuing appropriation instead of one time . So we believe that budget will be approved by the House by the last day, which is next Monday. I would also say that we have in there, not a line item, but an allocation that would be going to salaries. We feel very good about that for several reasons. In the past, higher education has not had anyone acknowledge that salaries were issues and as a result, the primary reason, way, salaries was supported at Auburn as well as other institutions were through tuition increases. So we believe then that we will be able to continue or strive, our efforts to meet the regional averages on salaries with other salary increases. We feel very confident on that, but also without having to substantially increase tuition, which is the best of both worlds.

We will also acknowledge that next year is an election year, or I would, and next year then there is usually another salary increase just as to help politicians get reelected. And I would say that since we now have set the precedent, higher ed gets some allocation for salaries when K-12 does, then I think that also bodes well for us next year as well. So I believe those precedents have been set. I believe the Auburn-Alabama team has worked very well together and I hope that we will expand those efforts in the future.

Just as a conclusion on legislation, I would remind you that we started last July working together. We developed our agenda by September and worked the Legislative leadership from September through the beginning of January in order to effect this positive change. It will require the same level of effort next year and I believe that it will be very critical that we stay together and have a very good agenda, the reason being is that the revenue estimates for next year are markedly lower than what we see this year and I would say approaching somewhere at the half of what we see this year. So that means it's going to be far more competitive, far more difficult and our efforts will have to be even more targeted, but, rather than be in a situation where we lose entirely, I think we would, it would best be described that we would lose proportionately with everyone else and therefore, I believe that we will be ok for next year and I believe the salary increase money would be in the budget for next year and I believe then that we will have had two years under our belt successful cooperation with the University of Alabama and I believe then that at that point we will go forward. I would say that another fringe benefit that actually, with my years in working on state budgets, never really had the opportunity to do, but based on the brinksmenship that we went through this last week, is that now Auburn and Alabama will be asked to come to the table when the budgets are being prepared and therefore will have a real opportunity to impact on the budget rather than wait and react to it when it comes out. So, all in all, I feel good about that.

Commenting in terms of the Board meeting, there are always a number of agenda that come before the Board. This past time the Board asked that we wait until the session was over until we approved some type of tuition increase. I believe that it will still be very close to the range that was recommended. That's what we're going to try to have and that will give us the flexibility I think we need to approach next year as well as to meet our objectives for this year. So I think you will see that brought back up in June. Would remind you that the June agenda would be very loaded in terms of a number of major topics. I've asked the Board to reserve Thursday afternoon, the 16^th, starting around lunchtime, for committee meetings. There will be several important committee meetings: Academic Affairs, as well as Property and Facilities and others. And then we hope to start, if this goes according to schedule, starting at approximately 9 o'clock on Friday morning with the, if you will permit me to say, the Areal@ Board Meeting, not committee meetings. So just to let you know that, that schedule will be modified somewhere close to that time line. I have asked that because I anticipate that the discussion on a number of topics will need to, we'll need to allow that to go on for some time, and therefore we won't wear everyone out by having committee meetings in the morning and trying to force about four hours of work into about two hours.

So with that in mind, I would remind you of several things that will come before the Board in June. This will be the second round for the Code of Ethics forms that were developed last time. They will be accumulated and at some point after that, whenever the committee, the Audit Committee, has reviewed it, will be released as we did before. It won't be released that very day, but that's the deadline for it to be turned in and that will be the second round. Also, there will be an election of officers as this will be the annual meeting for higher education and particularly this one for Auburn. June is generally the annual meeting that is required. So I would see that as important as well.

I would also hope, and you will have a presentation from Dr. Sauser in a little bit on strategic plan, that we will start to move very quickly, I hope, into involving a number of different people so that we can arrive by the end of this calendar year, with a definition of how we're going to define Auburn and establish the direction for the future or position it for the future, if you will. I hope that by the November meeting that will be completed and then we will start for the rest of that academic year with operational plans, as it's being called, what are we going to do to support that. So you will have an opportunity to participate over that, starting this fall, and I would encourage you to give it some thought because this is really to establish the direction for the university for many years to come.

The other part will be the three initiatives that remain. Last board meeting in April we covered the Gulf Shores, the Research Park and the airport. And this time we will cover the Agricultural Initiative, which has grown beyond that. We will also cover the AUM relationship as well as Academic Review. And I will be making several recommendations in that regard. I would simply emphasize this: there will be very few specific recommendations that I will put forward in June that I will ask for approval in June. What I will do is to say >This is what I want to do and during the next academic year, through the established faculty committees and the procedure, we will consider what we will do. For instance, John Jensen is also on the program and I'm pleased that he's here. He will present to you a concept of an institute. I think most of you have heard about it. Next year we will decide what is under the institute's umbrella and so there will be issues like that. So I want you to understand that there will be, what I consider to be, and adequate time for review prior to there being a final decision in that regard. I would say that the Academic Review would follow the same thing. I had hoped that we would have some criteria established, which we have not done that. And I had hoped that we would have some schedule established; we have not done that. I will recommend both and what my time line at this point would be, we'd come into the fall, establish the criteria for such a review and the schedule for conducting those reviews over a number of years and then start those sometime in the second half of the academic career. So that would generally be it.

I'm sure you're all aware that we have a new Provost. We were very fortunate to have three excellent final candidates and of course, John's picture was in the paper today, a full spread and I'm glad to see yours there rather than mine. I would say that I hope that he would have something to say, not only about that but any other topics that lie before him.

So, in the interest of time, I will just say those are the major issues that I think we need to be aware of. June 16^th and 17^th will be here before we know it and again to repeat, I anticipate making several recommendations, for the most part, will be formally considered during the next academic year.

So, Dr. Bailey, that is about enough for me.....

Dr. Bailey, Chair: Yes, thank you Dr. Richardson. Before I ask for questions, let me note, there's probably about 20 seats down in the first four or five rows for those of you who wish to move down, please. Let me encourage you to do so. I'm glad to see a good house today. Dr. Richardson is ready to answer any questions that you may have, if you would be so kind, do as Rik is obviously doing, if you have a question, we need you to go to the microphone, identify yourself as Senator or non-Senator and what department you are from. Thank you. Rik?

Rik Blumenthal, Chemistry: I have one question and then a comment. First question is about something I read in the Plainsman last week. I read in the Plainsman that the administration is reconsidering, or considering, the Academic Forgiveness policy. This, to me, is once again, and this will go to the comment I’ll make afterwards, overreaching by the administration. Academic forgiveness is an academic issue and should be handled by the faculty, not by an administrative decision. As I understood the policy when it first came down, this body was under direct threat by trustees to overrule and enforce the policy and this body responded by creating a policy. That policy was created by this body and I was surprised to see in the paper that the administration is considering it. I would have thought maybe one of our faculty committees on academics would be considering whether or not it was a good policy, not…

Dr. Richardson: Sure. Let me respond to you, I can answer it very directly, Dr. Blumenthal. I’m sure it was in the Plainsman, I don’t question that. I don’t know; I was equally surprised. That has not even been discussed one time, directly or indirectly, by anybody in the administration at all. So I don’t know where….

Dr. Blumenthal: Thank you. That’s good to hear. The other comment has to do with your decision on speaking to certain reporters who have opinions, I guess, more like mine than yours on certain issues. As far as I’m concerned, in my view of it, this is a personal opinion; this is another case of the Board, yourself included as a former member thereof, of wanting to control everything and wanting to control everything around it that happens. I agree very much with the editorial that came out yesterday, that you are trying to force the O-A News to take your side of the opinion, but some of us still hold that the Board did overreach and that we were on probation because of Board actions and that we’re not actually satisfied that installing a Board member as President was a solution to the Board overreaching and that’s all I really have to say. I think this is just another sign of the way that you want to control everything. Thank you.

Dr. Bailey: Bob?

Bob Locy, Steering Committee: Dr. Richardson, in your remarks, you alluded to the fact that you would ask for a specific recommendation, or that you would ask the Board to approve certain specific recommendations.

Dr. Richardson: Very limited.

Bob Locy: Ok. I specifically would like to ask you-there have been plans presented, not presented publicly, but that have been around concerning the College of Agriculture reorganization and among those plans were the movement of units outside of the College of Agriculture into a newly formed, reformed College of Agriculture. Can you specifically assure us that those particular items in terms of reorganization of units outside the College of Agriculture will not go to the Board for approval on the June 17^th meeting?

Dr. Richardson: I can. I can give you that assurance. Nothing like that will be approved. That is certainly something that will be looked at and we’ll discuss that during this next academic year, and see what’s appropriate and what’s not and the faculty committees will be involved in that. But no, there will not be any specific recommendations. The Board policies do give me the authority to form institutes without their approval. The next question is, what comes under, initially under the umbrella, and that will be determined during this next academic year. There will be no specific recommendations other than the Agriculture-Forestry college and school at that point. So as far as other departments and other colleges… Will I bring that up before committees? Will that be discussed next year? Yes. But there will be no recommendations made on June 17^th.

Conner Bailey: Are there any other questions for Dr. Richardson?

Dr. Richardson: Thank you so much.

Dr. Bailey, Chair: So many people, so few questions. We have some seats available down front for those of you who are disinclined to stand for the next hour or so.

I’m going to start off on a sad note by noting the tragic loss in an automobile accident, one of our fellow faculty, Dr. William “Bill” Carey of the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, was killed last week in an automobile accident. I understand a drunk driver was involved; not Dr. Carey but another vehicle. Another of our faculty colleagues, Scott Enebek, was injured in that accident that took Dr. Carey’s life. I had an opportunity to speak with Scott earlier today and I also spoke with Deborah Carey, who many of us know as a colleague in Staff Council and also now as Bill’s widow. Bill came to Auburn University in 1990, working in Forestry in the fields of Forestry Nursery Management, Pathology, Plant Pathology and Entomology. He was an award-winning researcher, top paper; Research Paper Publication of the Year and also twice Top Extension Publication. He was an accomplished Extension and Research Scientist who, as Scott said today, loved it, like many of us. His untimely passing is a personal tragedy for Deborah and her family, her children and her grandchildren. Also should put into some perspective what we all do on a daily basis and also the subject, or subjects that bring many of us here today. They are also important, but keep in mind what is really important. On behalf of the faculty, I want to extend my, our best wishes for a speedy recovery to Scott and our heartfelt condolences to Deborah and her family.

I want to continue the practice today that when we’re discussing matters, anyone who is represented in the Senate has the privilege of the floor and may speak to this body- that includes graduate students, undergraduate students, and Staff Council, the A&P Assembly, faculty and yea, even administrators. Given that many people may want to speak on matters today, if that in fact seems the case distinct from having a large audience, we may ask senators to be the first to speak, after all, this is the University Senate and those are our elected representatives. Everyone has an opportunity to raise a question at the Senate. When you do, as I indicated earlier, go to the microphone at the side; state your name and what unit you are from.

It’s now my pleasure to introduce somebody who, as the old saw says, probably needs no introduction to us-Dr. John Heilman-has been appointed to serve us as Provost. And even though Dr. Heilman is not on the agenda, I’ve asked him to come forward and make a few brief remarks. I’m sure John knows what brief and quick is. The laughter of the room suggests a few others also know that. John is known to us for having long served, I won’t say how long, long served Auburn University in a variety of capacities. He’s come up through the ranks, Assistant Professor up through Dean and Special Assistant to the President; served with Dr. Walker and Dr. Richardson in that capacity. John is a very thoughtful individual, very careful in his choice of words, we all know that. As we learned today in the newspaper, he has a dictionary close at hand, so I’ve got one too for the word “brief”. John is not normally given to hasty or rash decisions or statements. He’s an imminently fair-minded individual, who clearly understands the importance of shared governance, and I think importantly, have the ear and confidence of our Interim President, Dr. Richardson, so I believe he is in a unique position and will serve this university well and we will all hold him to that hope. John…

Dr. John Heilman, Provost: Thank you. That would be 32 years and I am a card-carrying dues-paid member of the AAUP. I’m mindful that the, what Conner has said, that this needs to be brief. There is a tremendously important and full agenda. Dr. Richardson asked me to talk very briefly about a few things; some of the main things that I’m focusing on right now and I’ll do that and then I want to spend a little time talking about an issue that came to my attention just this morning.

In terms of things that are getting first attention, I would just mention up front, Bill Sauser will be making a presentation on Strategic Planning. I believe Dr. Richardson suggested that in fact, the opportunities for input are going to be available in the fall. They will actually begin this summer and I would ask and encourage those of you, is the microphone getting to you so you can hear what I’m saying? Thank you. Those of you, who are not close to Auburn geographically, check the Internet. Keep posted. Input will be important. I expect you will be talking more about that.

In terms of things having immediate attention that will matter, I think in almost every case to everyone in this room, we are looking to an entering Freshmen class of 4,000. That’s above the target of 3,700. I simply at this point want to offer assurances that the Enrollment Management Committee and Linda Glaze are working to, with the deans to have the funding and do the planning to accommodate this large number of entering Freshmen.

We are in the process of a very short budget cycle. It is upon us. I believe merit recommendations are going to be due around the 20^th of May. Budget workbooks due around the 27^th, at least that’s my recollection of those dates. Our office will be working closely with the deans to complete the needed work and I would simply emphasize the importance of completion of formal reviews of all faculty and staff for whom that’s appropriate.

Next topic is Academic Program Review. I think there is some reference to that. I’ll simply say at this point, when I think about Academic Program Review, my thinking goes back in the first instance to the experience we had here 15 or 20 years ago in which there was an Academic Program Review process on a five-year cycle in which programs and units across the board were subject to reviews that involved faculty members from other departments and also outside faculty members. I personally also found that to be very productive and if asked what I think where the discussion of program review ought to start, that’s going to be my answer. I expect that may not be the complete answer that comes out of Dr. Richardson’s initiative, but that’s certainly the starting point as far as I’m concerned.

There are also and perhaps most importantly, and most immediately, open administrative positions to be filled. I think here are three dean positions in Education and the College of Liberal Arts and the Library. Also the Assistant or Associate Provost for Diversity and Multicultural Affairs. Each of these circumstances differs from the other. Each is and I would like to assure you, receiving immediate attention and it would be my hope to be able to report back results or status before very long. What does before very long mean? The answer is going to vary with which of those positions we’re talking about. I would certainly hope within a couple of weeks. Those are the main points I wanted to get to.

I’d like to spend a moment talking about an email message that came to me this morning and it relates to the strong likelihood that Vice President Cheney will speak at our graduation Friday of next week. I note that to the extent it is possible when a Vice President speaks to a group, that his talk will be apolitical. I received a email message-this is the first time I heard about it this morning-I received an email message, a few sentences from which I’d like to read to you and I would like to preface this by saying that I’ve known the faculty member who sent this for a very long time and I’m most grateful that this was addressed to me. This author said: “I am writing to suggest that you issue a clear statement regarding behavior during Vice President Cheney’s presumed visit to Auburn University. As you must know, many of the faculty profoundly opposes the policies of this administration and especially the role that has been reported for Cheney. You need to recognize how divisive this visit will be, and take steps to allow the expression of faculty displeasure during the graduation. You need to decide what are constitutionally permissible expressions of opposition and I urge to err on the side of generosity.” Again, the entire spirit in which I’m responding is one of appreciation for this having been said, and I think I ought to just say a couple of sentences about where I think the Provost ought to be on that, where I, in fact, am. I don’t think that and I don’t say this in the sense that rejecting the invitation, but I don’t think the Provost should be in the business of deciding what are or are not the limits of discretion. Those matters are for us to decide individually. I can speak to a point of view because it’s appropriate, and here, just a few key points: in terms of my thinking about this, which does not necessarily need to be yours, but I was asked what I thought and here it is: our students and their families are what the graduation is about. This is a great day in their lives and I would urge that we all keep that and their perspective in mind. Second, when I had the privilege several weeks ago of speaking of either this or the adjacent auditorium about the role of Provost, some of you may recall that I put up on the screen the word “civility”. And I think civility is something that matters, even or especially in the company of those with whom we strongly disagree. I think part of the spirit of the University is hearing what the other side has to say even if they are not talking about the subject that divides us, which is, as I understand, what will likely be the case. Finally, and this is something that is based on my 32 years at Auburn. Auburn is, this is something I believe; I’m speaking it from my heart-Auburn is a class organization and wants to be seen as such. Part of that is treating with respect and courtesy our guests, even guests with whose views and actions we may differ strongly. And I think finally, it’s not an appeal but it is a reference to what is for many in the Auburn family a guiding star, and that is the Auburn Spirit. The Auburn Spirit is certainly a spirit that is not afraid. It is also a spirit of the human touch, which, and this is only a very slight rephrasing, cultivates respect for my fellow man and the rest of that is a direct quote. It is in this spirit that I would expect to welcome the Vice President. This concludes my remarks.

Dr. Bailey, Chair: Thank you, John. Would you entertain any questions, if we could be, if anyone has any questions of Dr. Heilman?

Bob Locy, Steering Committee: Dr. Heilman, having just completed the SACS’ self-study and the SACS’ sort of type of academic program review, I guess I’d like you to comment on how you would see this academic program review we’re going into being different from what we just completed with SACS and whether that doesn’t in some way make this sort of redundant. We as faculty spend a lot of time being reviewed and being talked about and is it really necessary to have an academic program review with the SACS’ self-study this close at hand as a guiding principle for anything we needed to go forward with?

Dr. Bailey: Even though Bob has already spoken, if you would identify yourself….

Bob Locy: I’m sorry. Bob Locy, Faculty Senate Steering Committee.

Dr. Heilman: Bob, those are very good questions that I think could be asked also about national accreditation processes. A couple of quick reactions: one, I think, I understand that individual units contributed in many ways to and were examined in the SACS’ self-study process. I see that as an institution-wide review and if that is the view at 50,000 feet, I think a program review as the view from maybe 10 or 15,000 feet. I do think that those entities’ programs units that go through national accreditation reviews benefit from that. I would be first to agree that subjecting those units to yet another set of reviews is something that could reasonably be questioned. Those units that don’t have that kind of review, I think, would benefit from it and I’ll go back to my own experience back in the late 1990’s when there was an academic program review process set in place by the Commission. I do believe the whole purpose of this process and this initiative on the President’s part is to ensure that when questions are asked about whether these programs, how these programs relate to each other, does Auburn need them, are they doing a good job, should they be kept, then we have in place a process by which we can answer on our defined schedule those questions rather than having someone else come in and say ‘Yes, please, and I would like you to look at these questions right now.’

Dr. Bailey: I want to provide opportunity to those who feel they need to ask questions, mindful of the fact that we do have two substantive issues to address and one action item. So please…

Barry Burkhart, Psychology: I was just interested in the process by which Dick Cheney was invited here. That strikes me, we don’t usually have graduation speakers and as far as I know, there was no input from the Graduation Committee, so I’m just curious about how it happened.

Dr. Heilman: In all candor, I’m not entirely clear about that process, Barry. It’s a fair question and I’m not real clear on what that sequence of events was. I’m quite aware of the tradition for non-tradition that you speak of.

Dr. Bailey: Let me answer that. My understanding as an individual is that the University did not tender the invitation.

Jim Gravois, Library: I just want to commend you, Dr. Heilman, or whoever chose to make the decision to allow the Arlington West group to come to campus last week with their display of crosses and crescents and Stars of David to represent American troops that were killed in Iraq. And I understand that there are some colleges that did not permit that display and I just want to commend Auburn University for doing so. I regret that it will not be on display next week when the Vice President comes.

Dr. Heilman: Jim, thank you very much. I think that credit in this regard goes to Joseph Ansell, Interim Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and department heads in the college who felt that this would be an important thing. Barry, I think you initiated the conversation within the President’s Office, which is where I was, and it certainly was a very worthwhile thing to do and my sense is that whole process played out in a manner that, you might think this is saccharin, but I believe it, in a manner consistent with the Auburn spirit.

Sadik Tuzun, Entomology/Plant Pathology/Rules Committee: John, first of all, I welcome you. Secondly, I would like to ask you a very important question. I was going to ask this of President Richardson, but since I know you are working on this. This relates to the AU-AUM relationship. Although I was assured by President Richardson that there would not be a complete merger, as faculty we have no idea what is the spectrum of the discussions are. Before the June meeting, are we going to be given some sort of synopsis of what is going to be presented or are you willing to give something right now in regards to what the scope of AU-AUM relationships will be proposed in the Board’s June meeting?

Dr. Heilman: Conner, within the limits of time I will be happy to talk to that. I think there is a brief answer with which I’m comfortable with and which I think is not inconsistent with what’s been reported in recent weeks and what I’ve said at board meetings. That is, and get out the hook and stop me, I’ll try to make this very brief, Dr. Richardson proposed that the sentiment, that the relationship long term between this campus and Auburn at Montgomery is not entirely clear. I personally think that’s a reasonable judgment. He suggested that it would be important, given the increasing pressures on higher education-pressures for accountability, competition among institutions, state and nationally-for there to be some clarification or dissolution of that ambiguity. He posed as a framework for discussion of those four models, one of which is the fusion model, the other of which is complete separation. He has made clear from the front, from the beginning, that neither of those extreme approaches are what he has in mind. I see no evidence anywhere to suggest that there are any surprises in that regard. He then posed as the two middle alternatives the status quo, which is substantial independence with AUM having some program connection to the main campus and the Auburn name, and a closer and more organic and collaborative relationship, and it is that third, that option, that has received a lot of attention. You may be thinking that there has not been a lot of widespread input opportunity and you’re right, certainly in terms of what such closer collaboration would mean in practice that could be developed in terms of shared governance only in terms of opportunity to provide input, will be described at the June meeting. That as a premise, plus that there will be some attention to the fact, and it is a fact, budgetary and I think increasingly in terms of thinking statewide in terms of the organization of higher education of these two campuses plus our other outlying units or system.

Sadik Tuzun: Thank you. No organizational merger is in question right now.

Dr. Heilman: You mean fusion, like with one tenure system, one dean for each of the areas for two campuses or one faculty governing system? No.

Sadik Tuzun: Similar admission standards and things like that? It’s not an issue right now?

Dr. Heilman: No, and I think as the opportunity is given through the remainder of the year in connection with the strategic planning process, segway to Bill Sauser, I think there will be plenty of opportunity for broad discussion and input on those matters.

Sadik Tuzun: Thank you.

Dr. Bailey: Thank you very much.

Dr. Heilman: Thank you.

Dr. Bailey: Thank you everybody. Let me say again, we’ve got about a dozen seats down front for the press, faculty, and others. I saw Jack Stripling walking out the door. I just wanted to make sure he knew he was welcome here.

I want to thank the senators and faculty who have volunteered for committee assignments-Senate and University committees. The Senate Rules Committee is hard at work, meeting every week a couple of hours or more to staff those committees and are starting to pick up some momentum and make progress. Your Senate Executive Committee has had a number of meetings-two meetings so far-with Dr. Heilman and we’ve got another one scheduled for next week. We’ve also met with Dr. Richardson and with Mr. McWhorter, the President Pro Tem of the Board. We also attended the Board of Trustees meeting. Normally the Immediate Past Chair of the Senate, in this case Dr. Willie Larkin, would make a presentation to this body on what transpired at the Board of Trustees’ meeting, but Dr. Larkin has a professional engagement out of town and was unable to be here. I attended the meeting and I’m not going to go into great length about what transpired. Most of the discussion in the media was the budget and the tuition issues, and Dr. Richardson, I think, covered that adequately.

I’d like to single out John Tatum. John, are you here? Hello? John Tatum is our, undoubtedly he’s studying assiduously for a final. John is our new SGA President, a very articulate young man and acquitted himself quite admirably at the Board meeting representing the SGA. He made a very clear statement about the importance of tuition increases not jacking up and down, but maintaining a relatively steady pace and so I thank him for his efforts. Rich and I had lunch with him last week and we’ve also met with his Graduate Student counterpart, Mike Leslie and also look forward to meeting the new president of the Graduate Student Committee as well.

We, in addition, at the Academic Affairs meeting, chaired by Jack Miller, Trustee Miller, organized a workshop on on-campus housing as it related to academic issues, as if where people live has some consequence on their retention and grade point average and the like. Thank you, Jack. I see you heard my invitation to come forward. You can strike that from the minutes. (Laughter) It was a very interesting conversation and I’m actually, and I want to commend Trustee Miller for keeping the eye on the prize of academic standards within the Board of Trustees. I think he did admirably at this past Board meeting and I look forward to working with him on such matters. And I’d also note that through this we have back on the table the question of housing on campus for married students, particularly international students with families. So not that a decision has been made in any way, but that topic is back on the table.

I’d also mention that Dr. Sauser gave a presentation, which he’s about to present to us shortly, on the Strategic Plan and he was quite happy to come to the Senate and share his thoughts on that. There’s a considerable amount of interest on the Board of Trustees for the Strategic Plan. I can well appreciate that many of my colleagues are nervous about this idea of a strategic plan, given our institutional history. I’m asking that we keep an open eye and an open mind. Engage constructively, and we’ll ask Dr. Sauser to come forward soon and address us so that we’ll know something about the pace and structure that we’re going to be following.

The other matter that we’ve discussed with Dr. Richardson pertains to the Agriculture restructuring issues and after some discussion with Dr. Richardson; he agreed that Dr. Jensen should come forward and talk with us today. So I think these are both opportunities that we have for constructive engagement on matters of considerable importance and that is reflected by the crowd that is here today. I encourage everybody to listen carefully and take this opportunity to ask questions and have them answered and I’ll echo John Heilman’s statement about civility and the importance of that.

Before we get into the two information items on Strategic Plan and Agriculture restructuring, we do have one action item. And as I’m asking Jim Gravois to come forward on that, let me ask if there are any questions that the body has for the Senate Chair. Seeing none, I turn it over to Jim.

Jim Gravois, Library: Let me briefly explain what this is all about and review an item that some of you may not be aware of. The Faculty Grievance Committee receives grievances from faculty and then votes yes or no whether or not there should be a Hearing Committee to hear that grievance, in which case both sides present their position on the grievance. This refers to that second hearing committee. It has come to the attention of this year’s Faculty Grievance Committee, not the Hearing Committee that sometimes it has occurred that a hearing took place and it was not resolved, it was not even brought to a conclusion, and that is why we are asking to amend this portion of the Faculty Handbook. So I’m going to read the resolution as it stands:

WHEREAS under current policy, a grievance may remain open, even indefinitely, even following a hearing, if the chair of the Hearing Committee does not declare it closed.

THEREFORE, be it resolved that the Faculty Grievance procedure be modified to bring timely closure to the Faculty Grievance hearings by changing language in the handbook from the first that you read-do I need to read that out? Ok-a recommendation to the President, copies sent to all parties to the grievance and to the Grievance Committee, shall be made in writing by the Chair of the Grievance Hearing Committee within 30 days of the close of the formal hearing. The Grievance Committee and the Chair of the Grievance Hearing Committee shall grant extension of this limit only upon mutual agreement.

We’re changing that to: The close of the formal hearing shall take place no later than 30 days following it’s opening. And the rest remains the same: a recommendation to the President with copies sent to all parties to the grievance and to the Grievance Committee shall be made in writing by the Chair of the Grievance Hearing Committee in 30 days of the close of the formal hearing. The Grievance Committee and the Chair of the Grievance Hearing Committee shall grant extensions to these time limits only upon mutual agreement.

Dr. Bailey: Thank you, Jim. This is a resolution that comes from a standing committee and requires no second. Open the floor to discussion.

Are you ready for the question? Nope.

Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: Cindy Brunner from the Department of Pathobiology. I say that because some had begun to consider Pathobiology as my surname. Jim, did the committee consider any times longer than 30 days?

Jim Gravois: No.

Cindy Brunner: The reason I ask is because I am, or was, a member of a hearing committee that had a protracted length and one reason for that was the difficulty gathering faculty members together for the hearing during the months when we weren’t all on campus, and I think we want to consider that, although that may be taken into account in the last sentence, the allowance for a longer time period. But I understand exactly why you’re doing this and support the concept.

Jim Gravois: I would just agree with your comment that yeah, that should be dealt with in the extension sentence that’s already included.

Dr. Bailey: Any other comments, please? Are you ready for the question? All of those in favor of the resolution signify by saying Aye. Opposed like sign. Hearing no opposition, the resolution is adopted. Thank you, Jim.

At this time, I’d like to invite Dr. Bill Sauser to come forward. Dr. Sauser is going to discuss the proposed Strategic Plan of Auburn University.

Dr. Heilman: In responding to Jim Gravois’ kind remarks about Arlington West, which I do think was a very fine event for Auburn University; I gave credit appropriately to the Dean and college heads in the department of Liberal Arts. I was remiss in not making clear the tremendously important role played by the Professional Student Affairs and Dr. Wes Williams as Associate Provost and Vice President for Student Affairs. A project like that takes a lot of work and a lot of planning and they did it and was enormously helpful and if it was successful, and I think it was, they really deserve a great deal of credit for it. Thank you.

Dr. Bill Sauser: Good afternoon, I’m Bill Sauser, Professor of Management and Associate Dean for Outreach of the College of Business and the Sam Guinn College of Engineering. I received a telephone call about the middle of this semester and asked if I would come serve as a volunteer with John Heilman and Ed Richardson as they talked about some possible ways to structure a strategic planning process for Auburn University. I volunteered to do so and I’ve been working on that diligently with them ever since.

Strategic Planning-Auburn University, 2005. The topic came up a number of times during the Trustee meeting as we have heard, and it came up primarily during the committee meetings, because recommendation after recommendation would be discussed at the committee meetings and the trustees would say such things as: ‘Well, if we knew the direction we were heading in’, or ‘If we could agree on a common direction’, or ‘If we could agree on where we’re going as a university, we could make more informed decisions’. Clearly, that’s the purpose of strategic planning. I was asked to make a brief presentation to the trustees and agreed to do so. Conner was there to hear the presentation and invited me to share it with you today. So this is the same presentation I made to the Board of Trustees.

What we’re trying to do is define the university’s direction and do so with a limited set of priority long-term goals. Let me put on the next slide.

Purposes of Strategic Planning. This is what strategic planning is all about. It differs from other aspects of planning. Strategic planning is intended to define direction for the university. Where it that we are going-where is are we heading and we want to define that direction in roughly six to eight overarching priority goals. Where is the university heading? The purpose of a strategic plan is to guide policy decisions and legislative strategy. So when we go to the Legislature, we’ll know what we’re asking for. To help focus decisions about resource allocation. When it’s time to divvy up money or space or whatever the resource might be. To serve as the basis for unit operation plans and goals and benchmarks. Many units currently have strategic plans or process in operation, and the whole idea is to have a university strategic plan so that units can certainly build their plans around where it is the university is planning to go. Another purpose is to guide selection of future leaders. In fact, this is one of the things that the trustees made clear to us, that they want a plan to know where the university is going so that they can better select the next President and possibly the next Provost as well. So that’s one of the purposes.

We’ve had earlier plans here at Auburn University and those earlier plans have served their purpose. I’m talking about the 21^st Century Commission, The Roles Commission, and so forth. All of those were in the form of a strategic plan. The planning horizon on all of them has now expired, and so at present there is no strategic plan currently in existence for our university. Of course, that’s what the challenge is all about, putting one together. We need a plan so we’ll know where we’re going. We need that plan to be approved by the Board so that we’re all heading in the same direction and we want to define that direction through six to eight overarching goals-where it is we’re seeking to go. Once we know the direction we’re heading, we can make better plans as to steps we need to take to get there.

The Parameters for Strategic Planning. These were some of the things that in earlier discussions we thought were very important. We wanted the plan naturally to be based on Auburn University’s mission statement. The mission statement that has been adopted by the Board, in fact, I think it was refined slightly a year or so ago, so we have a mission that’s been adopted. We want that to serve as the basis for the plan and we want to take into account these six initiatives and I think that has been a concern-how do the initiatives fit into the overall plan of the university. Well if we knew the overall direction, we could make some determinations about that. We need to take into account those six initiatives.

We also talked about the need to focus on a rolling five-year planning horizon, with the idea that we’re always looking at least five years out into the future. If we look too much further out into the future, I think we will not be able to keep up with the technology changes that are coming, the demographics and the legal changes, the economic changes, but we want to look beyond where we are now. So we’re talking about a rolling five-year horizon. It’s also essential, and we all agree it’s essential, to involve a broad cross-section of the Auburn family. We want that involvement, but we also need to keep the effort streamlined so that it doesn’t become one of those five-year planning exercises that we all abhor. So what we’re trying to do is find a streamlined method to get lots of input and define direction for the university in terms of six to eight overarching goals. We want the plan to result in this clear direction. It needs to be translatable into action, because that’s the whole purpose of having the plan, is to guide us into action. We want it completed by the end of Fall 2005. Now I’ve mentioned to you that the Trustees have asked that the plan be ready so that it can help guide the selection of a new President, and we want it to be ready for them as quickly as possible. I was asked to plan on a completion date of November 2005.

Finally, the plan needs to lead to administrative action, immediate action, to put the steps into place. We need a plan that will lead toward implementation, so we need some plans and benchmarks as a result of the plan. Some action is underway-I can tell you what we’ve already done to this point. Dr. Richardson has held several planning sessions with groups of administrators. We had several multi-hour discussions. Those were very interesting. We were coming at this from a lot of different directions but started to find consensus around those parameters that I just presented to you.

I was asked, along with John Jensen and John Heilman, to serve as a little committee to help design the process and that’s my purpose. I’m working with John and John to design a process for all of us. I’m not leading the strategic plan, I’m not writing the strategic plan, I’m trying to help design the process based on the kind of materials that I teach and I use in my professional practice. We’ve also consulted with a group out of Atlanta, an outfit called Group Solutions. It was important to not only have internal people working on it-we’ve got lots of good people on this campus who know how to facilitate strategic planning. But we were concerned that it was necessary to have an external focus as well, because we don’t want to be open to any charges of bias. Everybody knows that I’m a member of the College of Business and the Guinn College of Engineering. I don’t want to show any bias toward those two particular colleges, and neither do my colleagues. We wanted to have an external facilitator who could come and work with all of us and see to it that all of our ideas become part of the plan. So that’s the action that’s under way.

First step in the process is to ask the right questions. You see, the outcome of the plan is totally dependent upon the questions you ask. So it’s important that as we start the process we ask the right questions and this is where we need broad participation right up front. What are the questions that need to be answered in a strategic plan. So that’s the first step, asking the questions. This month in May, we’re going to pull together a broad based strategy team and we’re going to ask that team, through a process called a Limited Delphi Technique, which means putting ideas on the table, discussing them, refining them, putting them down again, refining them until you’ve kinda distilled of the essence of the ideas. We’re going to work with that team to come up with some questions to be addressed. Then in June, the President is going to receive these recommendations and review them and help us sculpt the draft for the plan. So yes, these are the questions we need to focus on. If we seek to answer too many, we’ll never get it done. If we seek to answer the wrong ones, we’ll miss the opportunity. In July, that’s while most of us will be gone, in July we’re going to post these things on the web so please tune in to the university from time to time wherever you are over the summer and take a look on the web page that focuses on strategic planning, because we’re going to put planning materials in there, we’re going to put in there the questions, we’re going to have ways for you to provide feedback. We want to know what your particular questions are. The outcome of this process is the key strategic questions. So that’s what we’re going to be focusing on in the summer.

Step Two has to do with setting the goals that is, seeking to answer the questions by establishing what those goals are. And that process is going to begin in August so that we’re certain that we have everybody back to campus. And we’re going to hold a number of open forums, web surveys and other ways of gathering information. The whole purpose of that is to solicit ideas to answer these strategic questions and to come up with goals for the university. In September we’re going to take that information back to the Strategy team for review and a draft plan. In October the president will then seek feedback on this particular draft, and seek it widely, and decide on the overarching goals that he wishes to recommend. In November then the president is going to recommend six to eight strategic goals to the Board and ask them to consider those goals so that if the Board adopts those goals, then we will have a set of strategic goals, a direction that lets us know where we’re going. Then the next steps in the process, the Strategic Planning Process will end at that point because we will have identified our goals. But the next steps in Spring of 2006, like we typically do, the Vice Presidents, the Deans and Directors and Faculty will develop implementation plans-what are your plans for moving us toward these goals, benchmarks that we can measure progress against, and the budget will be built to implement these operating plans. In June of 2006, the president intends to report back to the Board progress toward these strategic goals and then recommend the operating plans and the budget to the Board. So we’re trying to build a strategic planning aspect into the process of putting together our operational plans for the year and the adoption of the budget.

So that is the presentation I made, Conner, and I’m delighted to have been able to share it with this group as well.

Dr. Bailey: Thank you very much, Bill. We have this presentation and one more major presentation by Dr. John Jensen. I want to make sure we have ample opportunity for both presentations and questions for both. So with that, Dr. Brunner.

Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: I have two quick questions, can I ask two? Is that allowed? One is…

Dr. Bailey: As long as the answers are quick.

Cindy Brunner: Ok. This one should be quick. Bill, you mentioned that in May you would have a broad-based strategy team that would recommend key questions. Who is on your broad-based strategy team?

Dr. Sauser: We’re going to have certainly deans, vice presidents, representatives of the faculty, staff, students, alumni. It’ll be a broad-based group of 30 or 40 people. I don’t have a list because that has not been finalized. John and I have talked about it and the president will finalize the list and we’ll have that list put together soon…

Cindy Brunner: That’s broad enough to make me happy.

Dr. Sauser: Good. Thank you.

Cindy Brunner: Second question is you said that in October, after the questions are derived, the strategic goals are being set, the president will seek feedback in October. What I’m asking now, not very clearly, is at what point would the University Senate or the faculty be given an opportunity to review these strategic goals before they are sent to the Board for their approval?

Dr. Sauser: I think that…what I meant by that particular statement, seek feedback, I think the president intends to give those to a variety of groups. I’m certain that he would ask the Senate to provide their feedback, or form of feedback, as well. The idea is to give plenty of time, a full month once the recommendations have come forward, for him to ask advice. And of course, that is one of the purposes of the Senate, is to provide that advice.

Cindy Brunner: Ok. A follow-up statement, and this is not directed against you, I want it on record and very, very clear that I don’t want to be learning about those strategic goals by reading about them in the newspaper the day after the Board Meeting where they’re announced.

Dr. Sauser: I don’t either.

Cindy Brunner: Ok, good.

Richard Penaskovic, Chair-elect: Dr. Sauser, at the start of your presentation you made the statement, if I took it down correctly, they, meaning the Board of Trustees, want a plan in order to select the next president. I’m wondering, isn’t that putting the cart before the horse in terms of…shouldn’t a permanent president who comes here, shouldn’t he be the one implementing a strategic plan rather than the interim president? Because what you’re doing is basically handcuffing the incoming president for the next several years with a strategic plan that he has absolutely no part in drawing up.

Dr. Sauser: Let me respond to that, because that’s a great question. We’ve talked about that back and forth. Rich, you made the comment, shouldn’t the new president be charged with implementing or should the new president be handcuffed with detailed operational plans to implement. What the trustees have asked for is a set of overarching goals because they know that any candidate for the presidency is going to ask that. ‘Where is the university trying to go? Am I the person who can move you in that direction?’ But the intent is to stop at that point and say ‘Here are the goals, the directions that we are foreseeing for the university. Now we are seeking a president who will implement them.’ So the implementation plans will indeed be put forward by the new president. The whole idea is to say ‘Here is a starting agenda.’ It is not intended to be ‘Here is a lock-down of what you are to do in detail during your presidency.’ That would be a mistake.

Richard Penaskovic: Can I ask another question or do you want to give these other people a chance?

Dr. Bailey: Please. David?

David Bransby, Agronomy & Soils: I’m not a senator. You indicated, Bill, that you had Group Solutions planning to help you from outside. If I’m not mistaken, this is the group that has already consulted several times for us during sessions and so on, and I’m afraid I haven’t come across a single faculty member who has been happy with that consulting firm. We’ve all been extremely disappointed so I would encourage you very strongly if you have to have somebody reporting from outside, let’s look at a few other options because this is not a strong consulting firm at all, especially with respect to their knowledge of how universities should run as well as what they claim to be experts at, and that is collecting information.

Dr. Sauser: Thank you.

Dr. Bailey: Rich, did you have another question?

Barry Burkhart, Psychology: Bill, I’ve been involved in planning processes across several occasions and what strikes me reviewing this plan are two things I think we ought to be sensitive to. One is it’s an extraordinarily top-down process that at this point, I suspect, that the faculty involvement has been minimal to nil, as opposed to a bottom-up process, where the planning process starts with faculty and students, which seems to be a more natural way of starting. And secondly, it’s extraordinarily ambitious in terms of a timeline and the idea that in one month faculty input will be received, collated, organized and responded to and addressed in some reasonable way strikes me as reaching. And so I’m concerned about that. I don’t have a question about it except that one of my suggestions at this point is that the faculty be involved in the planning process now rather than some time in the future. That disengages us from it and I think that is a mistake and will make faculty suspicious of it and will not be something that we see as a product of our engagement and it will be difficult to sell.

Dr. Sauser: So far, Barry, what we’ve done is, three persons, three members of the faculty, John Heilman, John Jensen and I were asked to put together a structure that would involve the faculty in the process and that’s what we’ve done. It is extremely ambitious and I am concerned about that. It’s extremely ambitious and I think the point is we want to identify the six to eight overarching priority goals; if that can’t be done, then of course, we’re not going to present a half-baked answer. It is very ambitious and we’re going to need a lot of input. Thanks.

Rik Blumenthal, Chemistry/Biochemistry: My question is with respect to this large committee of 30-40, which it sounds very good, the composition including all groups. How are these going to be selected? Obviously you can go around the faculty. I’m sure the president can pick out of this faculty 10 people who see everything his way or he could look blindly and find 10 people or 9 people who didn’t see everything his way. If, you know, how are the faculty representatives on this committee going to be selected?

Dr. Sauser: They’re going to be invited, faculty officers, are going to be invited to either be part of the committee or choose a delegate. Conner and I have talked about that. It’s a very good question and that involvement is necessary and I can tell you that during my discussions with the Vice President, I don’t think there is total agreement among anyone as to the direction we need to be heading and I note that our Deans are not monolithic as well, so I think we’re going to have a perfect broad-based group with lots of different perspectives.

Dr. Bailey: Speaking for the faculty on the Senate Leadership side, I would anticipate the Senate Rules Committee, which is the committee on committees, would be the normal place where we would…not yet. I’m sure this will happen.

Dr. Sauser: That is the intent, yes, that is the intent. That was what we talked about.

Dr. Bailey: The Strategic Plan, even though it was first raised by Dr. Richardson at the February Board Meeting, plans for this are at a very, I think it’s safe to say, nascent stage. So, thank you for all of the input and Bill, thank you for coming and bringing this forward at this early stage of development, and we will all be paying great attention to this very important topic in the months to come. Thank you.

Let me now invite John Jensen to come forward. The second major topic I’m sure shouldn’t detain us long today, is the subject of the College of Agriculture and draft recommendations of the President’s Commission, so without further ado, John Jensen.

John Jensen, Advisor to the President: Thank you. Conner, it’s a pleasure to be here and discuss this with you all. I’ve been at Auburn University, John Heilman, thirty-three years. I started out as a faculty member and went to department head and became Interim Dean and then Interim Director of the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station. I was about to retire as the president asked me to do this job. So I have a job through July of this year to try to help him with this plan for doing something to position the agriculture at Auburn University, as he put it, to be able to face the changes and the challenges of the next decade, decades and beyond, because agriculture has changed tremendously in this state of Alabama. It’s continuing to change and there are huge challenges to the future so that we have a viable agriculture so that we manage appropriately our natural resources, which are vast in the state, so that Auburn University gets behind it and is in fact the most influential part of our natural resources/agricultural scene in Alabama. So he’s asked me to lead a commission of which he appointed back in October I believe, which is made up of 29 members representative of agriculture/natural resources across the state.

I wanted to go through a few little explanations of a few terms. I wanted to discuss a few terms so that you could get in with the language of the experiment station and extension system. Most of the college and academic units, most everybody understands, but I want to make sure everybody’s understanding some of the language that we speak in the agricultural areas at Auburn. There is you will find, as the president said, one of the recommendations in this draft set of recommendations-remember these are drafts. They have not been finalized and won’t be in the President’s hands until May 9^th. These are still in an evolutionary process, they are still being discussed, we are still receiving input and plenty of it and the president has already taken off the table the discussion of reorganizing agriculture and natural resources by moving a whole bunch of units around, taking them from one college, moving them to another college. That is off the table. We’re trying to get to the nitty-gritty here, which is really about the formation of an institute and some other management things that have to be done in our experiment station/extension system.

The AAES is the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, and the ACES you may have heard of, is the Alabama Cooperative Extension System at Auburn University. 1883 was when the state of Alabama established the Agricultural Experiment Station, which was the 9^th in the nation, and in 1887, the Hatch Act, a federal legislative act, was passed that provided federal funding to establish state agricultural experiment stations, and this is real important, because these are called formula funds, which the experiment station has about $4 million dollars of those funds to conduct agricultural research. The extension system was, began its efforts in 1906 and the Smith-Lever Act was the federal legislation that created the experiment station in the federal, state, and county partnership for education. That was non-formal types of education. To give you a perspective of what these two funding organizations do-this is the experiment station and the extension system, AAES and ACES-and what are different academic units, and how they depend on, they depend on the experiment station/extension system and how those units depend on the academic units to carry out their mission, you can see that the College of Agriculture is very heavily into support of the experiment station and of the extension system, 89 FTEs of faculty time.

School of Forestry-quite a lot smaller that the College of Agriculture-is highly dependent upon those federal funds and state funds that come to AAES and the extension system, and also Human Sciences, College of Science and Math and Veterinary Medicine also have a stake in this. So what, if you been to any of the Senate meetings, or Board of Trustee meetings for the last five years, when I was experiment station director, we brought to the Board, the Agricultural Committee, some of the problems that were occurring in trying to basically make budget. Costs of doing business here at Auburn University, thank God, are going up, because faculty deserve higher salaries and get to that regional average. But the problem was is that we don’t share in the benefits of the tuition hikes, which is what the president mentioned, which is where those salary adjustments came from, therefore we had to take it out of our hide and cannibalize the organization. Nothing wrong with that to make sure faculty gets the salary adjustments, problem is that it creates a situation where we can never seem to catch up. So we brought it to the Board several times what needed to be done and we had several different groups that got together to discuss the crisis. We had the fix-it committees of vice presidents and some deans and we’ve never really got to any resolution of this. So this is why the president has brought it to this commission to say ‘Tell me how we might be able to fix this situation and continue to have an experiment station/extension service long into the future, because the way it’s going….’ My comment has been that in the year 2050 in the experiment station, we’re going to have one faculty member left over who’s complaining about market equity adjustment and that isn’t a joke, because that’s where we’re headed by basically cannibalizing our system.

It’s a lot of money. We get a lot of money in the experiment station through the federal appropriations and the state appropriations-$31 million dollars. We also, the extension system, gets a lot of money-$8.5 million in federal appropriations, $28.8 from the state for $37.3 million dollars. So you put those together, I told Conner the other day and Rich I think it was-I just made a blank statement, that’s a $100 million dollars together, I think it was about 70 of the federal and state but then you put the grants and contracts together with other sources of auxiliary dollars and everything and it comes close to a $100 million dollar package-the experiment station and extension system.

This is kind of an explanation of where we’ve been going. State appropriations have been going up since 1985 with stalls, fits and starts here and there. Federal appropriations are level and in fact, decreasing. The threat is right now in the Congress that these dollars be reduced by half, $4.5 million dollars of our dollars. The Forestry Dollars, which are called Mac-Stennis Dollars-MacIntyre-Stennis Dollars-$750,000 break by half and in 2007 completely gone. $4.5 million dollars-that’s exactly why we have to figure out how to position ourselves today to be able to handle that kind of cut and still come out the other side with a vibrant, exciting and invigorated natural resources effort here at Auburn. These are the same depictions of the problem with ACES with federal dollars and state dollars.

The challenge then is continuing, need to improve our compensation because we do have to bring our salaries up and continue to at least try to match what the rest of the region is doing and try to do better. However, our Auburn salary increases exceed the state appropriation increases and we must reallocate existing resources to fund salary increases because we do not benefit from tuition revenue, which in fact, we should not benefit from the tuition. We do not teach with those dollars, we do research and work, extension education work.

Reallocation means severe cutbacks, though, in the numbers of faculty staff, A&P and research support. If we have to give up these federal dollars or if we have to set them aside to be able to prepare for that eventuality, because it is coming, the deans of the four colleges and one school, that is, you saw those up there, I won’t go over them again, we all discussed that and we have to prepare for that eventuality. And the cuts in faculty numbers, whenever this happens or whatever happens in the future, is translated into less research and no safety net.

So what we have then is a series of recommendations that the commission made. As I said, you’re not going to see number 3 here. Number 3 is off of the table. It was never really on the table because the president has never seen the final draft because the final draft isn’t ready. But enough discussion has gone on, we’ve had Conner and others involved, I’ve discussed it with the president and John Heilman and deans and vice presidents have been in discussion and that was taken off the table, and that has to do with reorganization by moving units around. And in fact, that was one of the first recommendations that came from the commission, but as time went on through this evolutionary process of discussion, we found that the real help to agriculture/natural resources was the idea of an institute, that would not only be an umbrella for agriculture and natural resources, but if you read the faculty handbook, it’s an umbrella for the whole university, because if we’re really going to be able to do what we need to do to help the citizens of this state in the future, we have to think much more broadly and be much more inclusive in terms of who does the work to solve the problems that we have a mission to solve, through our research programs and extension programs. That means everybody here should be involved. Everybody on this campus and in fact, I’ve said everybody on any other campus in the state of Alabama or wherever we can find the expertise to ensure that the people of Alabama are well served. I would rather keep the money here and use the expertise that’s available.

So recommendation one came up a little later in the process and that was to establish an institute for Food, Fiber and Life Systems. That was a temporary name; we don’t have a name yet, because everything here is temporary and it’s a draft that would have as its founding partners-that’s where the money is-the extension system and the experiment station and would include the College of Agriculture, and as the president said, the School of Forestry. Those are the only two under that umbrella, but truthfully, if you look at the faculty handbook, the definition of an institute is that it’s broad-based, it includes everybody. So I still have a question as to how do you include those two and not include everybody or how do you exclude those and just have the funding agencies as the starting point for the institute. The institute will be led by a vice president reporting to the president and this seems a point of discussion these days. There are no details on this yet, as the president said, this is a broad concept here and this concept will be discussed in detail as time goes on, I understand, and the deans of the College of Ag, School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences and designated units will report to the institute for research and extension programs. That really should read experiment station research and cooperative extension programs into the provost for academic affairs. There’s no need, no desire to create another route for all the academic programs.

This is the rationale-the institute will enhance the status and visibility of research and extension programs facilitate allocation of funds to emerging priorities, and if you become a well-funded integrated program, which means it goes broadly across the university and delivers information effectively and efficiently. We don’t have two organizations talking about the same thing but not really united in any way. It’ll set policy and agenda for agriculture and natural resources and other closely related programs at Auburn and it’ll facilitate broad-based university and community involvement and unify a broad political base, because today there is a division of Auburn University. You’ve got Division I, which is the main campus, two is AUM and three and four are experiment station and extension, they also have a political base and a lot of it has to do with funding of the organizations. One of the most important things here to remember is that as a experiment station director, and I had, it was a difficult situation in terms of being able to reallocate the dollars so that those dollars could be put into those priority areas that we all in discussion, all of the stakeholders, including the faculty, the people out in the state, thought were priorities. Just to be able to handle that, this commission has said ‘We really need the level of a Vice President to make sure that it gets done.’

Recommendation Two is basically an operational thing where we consolidate the five comparable administrative functions of experiment station and extension system and College of Ag is thrown in there because right now, College of Ag and the experiment station, because the College of Ag is such a big player in the experiment station. It is administratively together already. School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences has its independent rep. That hasn’t been discussed. That’s a detail that we’ll discuss later that may or may not be part of this administrative consolidation. Business and Finance are two large units within each organization. Duplication-Human Resources is duplicated, and in fact, in the extension system, it’s a different system than the HR system of the university. Information Technology is already unified. Communications and Marketing is not unified; we are in discussions with John Hochtel, too. And Landon Facilities is mostly an experiment station issue and there is a sixth one, and as a former dean I would add, and that is Development, because we have development going on at both units, at all the units. The rationale, of course, is to minimize redundancies and facilitate the planning and prioritization process. There is a model out there that looks a lot like this model and it’s IFAS-Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida. Of course, this is just a very general concept. There are no details, and as everybody knows, the Devil’s in the details and everybody will be involved to figure out how in the world this is put together and how in the world it gets up and running. The president referred to that process. Right now, he’s looking at a concept and I’m not even sure he’s going forward with that, but John, I think that’s the sense right now, that he seems to have an interest in this.

(Inaudible comments from Dr. John Heilman)

John Jensen: Not discussed and certainly will be a lot of discussion in the future about it.

(Further inaudible comments from Dr. Heilman)

John Jensen: I’m calling on you because you have been in some of the discussions.

Recommendation Three we skipped and that should make people feel a little easier because it was a recommendation of the Commission, who, I must say, worked very hard at coming up with their best shots at this and through faculty input. There were a hundred and ninety comments, different comments on our website that we had up and running to find out what the faculty was thinking. There were prompts in terms of what we should do and a lot of prompts had a lot to do with moving programs around because that’s what came out of our first meetings and those comments were then put into that Recommendation Three and that has been taken off the table for the time being and maybe even permanently, I don’t know.

Recommendation Four is basically-we need to rename all of this-interestingly enough, agriculture is a term that our commission thought is outdated. Most of them felt agriculture should be put in a museum, put aside, revered, but that we ought to be expanding and broadening our base and thinking about agriculture a different way, natural resources obviously should be included and environment-something we already do a lot of-environmental work and this has to be done, namely all the way from the top down, through the College of Agriculture, if there is an institute and obviously some of our other programs that really need to be renamed. One of the reasons for that is that Dr. Richardson is very concerned about the number of students in our College of Agriculture program and we have a large faculty namely because their jobs, they have jobs to do the research for the experiment station and they have an obligation to do extension work for the extension system, but in fact, we have 874 undergraduate programs for a 150 faculty members, and it seems out of whack, although I know there are reasons for that. We need to be able to increase the numbers in our college because there are more students who would study agriculture and related fields if, in fact, we didn’t just do the name change but do some other things, curriculum changes, in our program to meet the challenges of agriculture and natural resources.

All over the state of Alabama there are 15 research units. Research and extension units are made up of six of those units. And we have the E.B. Smith Research Center down the highway on I-85 and one of the things that we need to do that was recommended by this commission is that we need to broaden the use of those six research extension units at E.B. Smith and we really need to look at those other units, of which there are seven-six active units out there and try to find out exactly what their mission is for the future, because we basically can’t afford all of that. The infrastructure, the people and all that goes on there and if we have the dollars, we need to put the dollars and start to prioritize and put the dollars where we get the most strength out of our programs. In fact, I think I heard reference to that from either the president or you, John, about the expansion of outlying units. I heard you say something about that and I didn’t know if you were referring to that. You weren’t, ok. Well, I think that these have opportunity for going way beyond what we do today in agriculture but into distance education Auburn University credit courses, non-credit courses, technical programs, and other such. These multi-purpose centers will improve our image, reach more citizens, garner external support, enhance the relevance of our university and our agriculture and natural resources program and serve as a conduit for the campus.

This is basically a recommendation that approves of the restructuring of the extension organization. It is almost complete at this time and has followed this route of restructuring and tying the regional agents to the research and extension centers. We’re going from a county approach to a more regional approach that we have better experts in the field.

The recommendation #7 is to find ways to self-fund our programs. There are a lot of opportunities out there but the problem is, if you’ve been to any of the board meetings, that the Board of Trustees’ document basically states that any sale of property/lease of property, the dollars go back into the General Fund. I have nothing against that, but the experiment station has been the stewards of those lands and dollars for years, investing in those properties with the hard work of our people and there isn’t any incentive to develop the properties. For example, we have gas, natural gas potential on one of our stations. These opportunities, really, there’s no incentive to do any of this development because the dollars don’t seem to go back into the pot of the experiment station/extension system. So other things, of course, that are happening at the university: intellectual property issues, challenges and opportunities that we’re really excited about. Fees and Services have mostly to do with extension. Of course, Development is something that needs to take off and do or play a much greater role.

Recommendation #8 is an interesting one. We want to look more, I think; I know we do, in our College of Agriculture, especially look more like the other faculty. We have 52 nine-month appointments in Agriculture, in the college and we have 92 who have not converted to nine months and we want to complete this process so that we can also provide a savings to the experiment station and start this process to pulling back dollars that could be used to address the priority needs of the state. And there are the reasons for converting faculty. I think you know all those reasons.

And number nine doesn’t exist because that was also taken off the table, which is the make up of an advisory group. We wanted a broad-based advisory group that would be made up for any institute that is proposed and developed that includes a broad base of people, including the faculty and the leadership at Auburn University.

Thank you very much. I’m ready for questions.

Dr. Bailey: Thank you, John. I imagine there might be one or two. It’s a race…one by Dr. Brunner.

Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: Yes, one by Dr. Brunner of …

John Jensen: Pathology…. (Laughter)

Cindy Brunner: Pathobiology. Not all dead things, no. True to form, my theme today is faculty involvement and I want to, first I want to say that I’ve heard several people comment ‘Well, I’m sure everybody’s heard about the institute.’ We haven’t all heard about the institute, even those of us in Veterinary Medicine who have 1.58 FTEs invested in the experiment station haven’t heard about the institute. So I appreciate your coming here and telling us a little bit about it.

The main thing I’d like to know though is you talked about Recommendation #3, which is not on the table despite the fact that it came as a result of broad-based discussion/commentary and faculty was invited to comment and 190 comments were received. I didn’t know anything about that. I don’t know that comments were solicited from units beyond the traditional Agriculture units and if Recommendation #3 and these other recommendations are going to involve other colleges and schools at Auburn University, the solicitation of comments and suggestions needs to go to a broader audience.

John Jensen: You want me to answer any of that?

Cindy Brunner: It would just be a recommendation to the planning group, ok.

John Jensen: Thank you.

Dr. Bailey: To come to the other side, Jim Bradley.

Jim Bradley, Biological Sciences: I defer to Tony Moss.

Dr. Bailey: Ok.

Tony Moss, Biological Sciences: Thanks, Jim. Dr. Jensen, thank you very much for coming today and thanks also for taking #3 apparently, entirely off the table. But there is a clause in #1 which says that, it seems to be saying that, maybe that kind of restructuring, that kind of moving of other academic units into other co-Ag or this infrastructure that you’re talking about, the new institute, could still happen. Is that correct?

Dr. John Jensen: I heard, I think it was the president who made that comment today, something offhand that said ‘We’ll look at other units.’ It’s always a choice, I guess, but I see it right now as a lot of discussion that’s going to have to occur. Maybe the president said that, I can’t remember if it was you or the president, but he went on and said that next year there is going to have to be a lot of discussion during the next academic year as to what is the composition of any institute that he decided to propose. And in fact, he hasn’t proposed it; these in fact are recommendations that are still in draft form which are due to him on May 9^th. So I would guess that there will be a lot of discussion. I don’t know what I’ll have to do with it but that is something that you will need to make sure that you have is a lot of discussion about this. If you’re going to launch this thing, there’s a lot at stake and it’s really the future of our agricultural and natural resources programs here at Auburn University and I think it would be good to have very good recommendations and to have a lot of discussion about it from the faculty and everywhere.

Tony Moss, Biological Sciences: Are you saying that follow-up recommendations and input is needed before May 9^th?

Dr. Jensen: No sir. Now this is the broad, he’s looking at a broad concept, a concept. A concept may be an institute, ok. I don’t even think that’s absolute. I haven’t talked to him yet. These are going to go from the commission to him May 9^th and he can pick and choose what he wants. But my feeling is that he supports the idea of an institute and the discussion of whether there is a, the leadership of an institution has never gone on. This is coming from a commission to him and after he looks at it, there will be a lot of discussion as to the makeup and the leadership of the institute. And I would want it that way.

Dr. Bailey: Jim Bradley.

Jim Bradley, Biological Sciences: I’m not a senator. I have comments, John. My comments are really directed to you and to Dr. Richardson. I’m sure somebody will be taking notes, maybe Dr. Heilman. Take some accurate notes to go back to Dr. Richardson. I’d like to first say that I’m speaking on behalf of the whole department of Biological Sciences, as was Tony. We have a number of people here today from our department and I have comments on the process that has resulted in the recommendations that you presented today. So the process to date-several concerns, I hardly know where to begin. I don’t want to take too much time; I don’t want to take a lot of time. My first comment is that I’m glad to see that Recommendation #3 is off the table but I did note that you said parenthetically, permanently maybe, I don’t know. My assumption is that it’s not off the table permanently, and because of that, I’d like to comment on the process that has resulted in your other seven recommendations and did result in Recommendation #3, as of two weeks ago, which included moving units from the College of Education, College of Human Sciences, and College of Science & Mathematics. First of all, this commission, appointed by Dr. Richardson, it’s another top-down process, and I note that of the 29 people on the commission, there’s not a single faculty member. You’re the only faculty member, you’re the head of the commission, you’re appointed head of the commission by Dr. Richardson, but the peanut farmers are represented, the cattlemen are represented, the paper and pulp people are represented, the poultry people are represented, and a number of other agricultural entrepreneurs are represented, but not one faculty member, not one dean, not one representative from any department or any of the three colleges that were initially in Recommendation #3. For that reason, and that reason alone, I -- and I believe I speak for my colleagues-- believe that all the other recommendations have really no validity whatsoever because you’re involving, you’re recommending changes in a structure of units that affect teaching, they affect research, they affect Outreach, they affect relations between colleagues that have been established and all of this, with not a single formal bit of input on that commission from faculty members and I’ll just reemphasize what Cindy Brunner said a minute ago. You mentioned this website, which is a first today, just five minutes ago, the first I ever heard of this website and I just ask you, if you need a question, this will be my question, and you can comment on my comments, but was the dean of COSAM informed that there was a website? Were all the department heads in COSAM informed that there was a website? How about the dean in Human Sciences, the dean in the College of Education? All of those departments in those colleges, were they informed that there was a website that they could comment under? That is my question.

Dr. Jensen: Right. It started out, Jim, as an experiment station/extension system people. All the people who are funded by those two organizations were included in all of the emails and communications. I don’t know if you’re on the experiment station’s funding or not. But those are the people where it started out, to ask them those questions and that are where it went to.

Jim Bradley: I have a HATCH project, but I didn’t get any email on this. But my question is, what about the mid-level administrators in these other colleges that were affected by these recommendations, that two weeks ago was a viable recommendation?

Dr. Jensen: But it wasn’t a recommendation, it was public or that it was still in discussion. However, you got hold of the recommendation and it wasn’t final and it’s still not final, and that’s where I kind of…it wasn’t a recommendation; it was a discussion that was going on…

Jim Bradley: It was a potential recommendation to the president from a group of people that have no faculty members whatsoever on it.

Dr. Jensen: Yes, I understand.

Jim Bradley: Only commodity group people.

Dr. Bailey: Thank you.

Raymond Henry, Biological Sciences: I’m not a senator. I’ve been here since 1983 so I’ve spent my first couple of years in the old Zoology/Entomology department as part of the College of Agriculture and so I’d like to go ahead and address the fact that perhaps Dr. Bradley’s talking about a flawed process and I’d like to talk a little bit about perhaps the substance of the process producing a flawed recommendation, which was Recommendation #3 and perhaps start the discussion on why that recommendation should remain off the table and should not reappear in any other form, and primarily because the department which is now Biological Sciences split from Agriculture about 20 years ago and since that time, we’ve turned over approximately 70% of our faculty, some positions multiple times, and which each new hire we’ve moved further and further away from our history with Agriculture and we’ve evolved into more of a department of basic biological sciences, independent from agriculture in administration and in intellectual philosophy. Our current departmental identity, which is was very strongly forged in the beginning of the College of Science and Mathematics, and all of our faculty now feel a very strong affinity to the administrative structure of the college, our sister departments and our students and we’ve thrived under this environment and it’s allowed us to become a very nimble department with the ability to adapt quickly to the changing landscapes of Biological Sciences. We’ve maintained our ties with our colleagues in Agriculture through the two Peaks of Excellence programs that are university wide, Cell Molecular Biology and the Food Safety programs. Both of these provide an excellent and already pre-existing framework for collegiate collaboration. Essentially, in summary, we’re 20 years removed from Agriculture and we’ve gone through substantial changes during this time and these are not changes that can be reversed easily. Thank you.

Dr. Bailey: Thank you. Yes?

John Armbruster, Biological Sciences: Hi. To kind of hopefully not beat what should be a completely dead horse a little bit more, but I was just wondering if the commission did any homework on the trends in the United States of where Biological Sciences is, because in the SEC there are no universities with Biological Sciences in the College of Agriculture, and across the United States of the 50 major land-grant universities, only five have the department of Biological Sciences in the College of Agriculture. There’s a little weird thing going on in Florida. Where our Biological Sciences department is split into three units, two of those co-listed with Agriculture, but most of the administration is taking place in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. So did anybody actually look into the national trends because it would be very detrimental to our students coming in to be placed into a College of Agriculture, because that’s not where they expect to find Biological Sciences in the 21^st century?

Dr. Jensen: No.

Dr. Bailey: Any other questions? Yes?

Sharon Roberts, Biological Sciences: I am a member of the Department of Biological Sciences and not a senator. What I would like to do is just bring to the front faculty concerns from the Department of Biological Sciences with regards to these ideas and the impact they would have on our teaching missions. Over the years, the department of Biological Sciences has focused in their majors in providing a strong fundamental understanding of biological processes and those same interdisciplinary interactions that are essential to our collaborative research in basic biology are central to now how we educate biologists. We have approximately seven different majors and there are a number of courses offered in the department that are required in all of these majors. We also share many elective courses across these majors. If some of our faculty are moved into the College of Agriculture, or dispersed, our faculty is dispersed into various units of the College of Agriculture; this would disrupt the continuity of our curricula and our instructional interactions. Our curricula also rely heavily on building a strong conceptual foundation in the other basic sciences, such as Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics. The new Science Learning Center houses the teaching laboratories for both Biology and Chemistry. And that was done in recognition of the fact that we interact so strongly with the other basic science departments in COSAM and so our faculty is really concerned that if we move Biological Sciences out of COSAM, the, uh, with the two departments in different colleges, will disrupt interactions and certainly make them logistically difficult. The final point I’d like to make is that COSAM also houses the university’s Pre-Health program. It’s one of the strongest such programs in the state and we’re concerned about the impact of moving the program out of COSAM. The advising for this program is done by advisors who are located in the deans’ office in COSAM, with 40%-50% of the teaching in each of the Pre-Health majors provided in the Department of Biological Sciences. So if again some of our faculty are moved into the College of Agriculture, this would potentially disrupt the interaction between teaching and advising and certainly if the Pre-Health program itself were moved into the College of Agriculture, the point that my colleague just made about lack of visibility and loss of competitiveness for Pre-Health students would be tremendous. There are no other land-grant institutions that house their Pre-Health program in a College of Agriculture.

Dr. Jensen: Appreciate those comments and they are in the minutes. Good, excellent comments.

Dr. Bailey: They are heard by the Senate leadership as well.

Kathryn Flynn, Secretary-elect /School of Forestry & Wildlife Sciences: What I’d like to say is a couple of things. First off, I have no Ag/experiment station appointment but I do have a predominately an extension appointment and it’s possible I missed the email, but initially the notification of ability to comment as far as I know didn’t go out to ACES and I was unaware of it for a while. Also, in terms of Group Solutions, I didn’t attend the listening sessions, but I got some really negative feedback from our faculty and Ag faculty in terms of how they managed those periods of time where faculty could come in. There were comments, such as the questions they asked were leading, so that you felt like they knew where they wanted to go and they would provide that type of information. So I think the faculty as a large group felt very uncomfortable with Group Solutions. I’d also like to say that the concept of an institute within the School of Forestry & Wildlife Sciences, I have not found a lot of support amongst the faculty for the model that’s proposed. We all sort of feel like that maybe it’s a done deal, but I don’t think that very many of us feel very comfortable with the model and particularly when you look at the University of Florida, their Forestry program is not preeminent and there are very few of us who feel like this model will do much to enhance Forestry & Wildlife Sciences here at Auburn University.

Dr. Bailey: Dr. Weese?

Dr. Jean Weese, Nutrition and Food Science: I’m from the Nutrition and Food Science Department, which is also a part of talk of moving around, and let me say that I’ve been here at Auburn University for 18 years. Upon coming to Auburn University I was told that the Food Science department, I’m sorry, that part of the Food Science Department which was housed within Human Sciences, and Nutrition and Food Science would be enhanced immensely. We needed a Food Science program to build up the food industry in the state of Alabama and since being here 18 years, that program has diminished immensely. I’m here to say that in contrast to what else you’ve heard today, that probably the best place for Food Sciences is in the College of Agriculture, because that is actually the home of most of the places of Food Science, so, I hope that it is not off the table for the move of academic units because we need to get over the administrative challenges of what is best for a dean or college or a department from an administrative point of view and look at what the need for the state of Alabama is and move in that direction and not just in our own and try to make faculty think that everything, change is bad. Change is sometimes very good and I move that we actually look at this at a broader sense instead of saying that nobody wants to do this, because that indeed is not the case.

Dr. Bailey: Thank you. Yes, sir?

Jim Barbaree, Chair of Biological Sciences Department: I’m not a senator. I would like to say that I’m delighted that number 3 has been taken off the table, but in case the horse is not dead yet, and if there’s a little more room, I need to say a few words because we were really impacted by the possibility of this happening. Now I’d like at this time for the faculty of Biological Sciences to stand up to show you the representation that we have in opposition to what you had in proposal to move Biological Sciences into Agriculture and to go on and say that we had a faculty meeting recently and we did not have one faculty member who would vote to go into the Agriculture institute. So we are totally opposed to the process that has taken place for this initiative and we’re totally opposed to the idea of going into agriculture in this proposition and so I think that if something like this happened, it really could be a dismantling of this department, which is a very productive department and has a lot of teaching and research initiatives and also has a lot of impact on what goes on here at Auburn University. So I think if something like this did happen, it would be a step backwards for Auburn University.

Dr. Jensen: Thank you, Dr. Barbaree.

Dr. Bailey: Yes, sir?

Bob Cook, Chair, Geology & Geography Department: I’d like to echo what Dr. Barbaree just said. I asked from input from my faculty. I got no positive responses at all. Probably you’ve got more important input in the last fifteen minutes than you’ve gotten in the last three months from your commission. Appreciate the work that they did but still this is analogous to COSAM, my college, deciding that we’ve got some problems and the president tells us to form a committee and solve them. We have an advisory committee. Our solution is to pull Poultry Science into COSAM because they do science, but not tell them about it; let them find out through the grapevine, which is what happened to us. So we oppose the process of not being involved in decision-making or making recommendations that involve us probably for the next 10 or 20 years, and we don’t like finding out about it in an off-handed manner, through the grapevine. Thanks.

Dr. Bailey: Thank you. Are there any further comments? Identify please, indentify….

Sadik Tuzun, Entomology/Plant Pathology: John, this thing started as a very big process and it came down to have an institute just rolling it onto Forestry and Agriculture. What is the difference or the benefit this institute will bring to the College of Agriculture? And, how the departmental structure will be affected by the formation of institutes? Furthermore, institutes are usually run by directors and why a VP will oversee any running of an institute?

Dr. Jensen: That certainly was a recommendation, Sadik, and it’s still to be discussed. The major concept is an institute. How the leadership will, what kind of leadership will be there, will be in place, I really don’t know. How it affects departments, I couldn’t tell you. Certainly, the institute is made up of the two big partners, that’s the money partners that is the experiment station and the extension system. College of Agriculture may benefit, it may not benefit. The big benefactors may be the School of Nursing, I have no idea. It depends on the programs that we are advised to take on in terms of addressing the needs of the people of the state of Alabama. It can move, it may hurt the College of Agriculture or it could help. It will be based on a lot of different issues-based programming in the future if in fact it changes the model they have today, where it’s basically a formula that is spread between the five colleges and schools.

Sadik Tuzun: I can’t see one benefit. Institutes usually keep larger share of their grants and contracts from the VPs of the….

Dr. Jensen: Those are all details that have to be worked out. That’s way down the line.

Sadik Tuzun: But I mean that this is a part…

Dr. Jensen: Devil’s in the details.

Dr. Bailey: Thank you, Sadik.

Bill Hames, Geology and Geography: Dr. Barbaree mentioned earlier the thought if there was any life left in the horse regarding Recommendation #3, I could be called for a sports penalty, which is piling on perhaps after the play may be over, but I do want to say as well in representing Geology and Geography at least in my individual points of view, how impacted we were to become aware as we did of point #3 and I myself came from-Virginia Tech was my alma mater, a great land-grant institution-I just searched my mind to think of where there could be another College of Agriculture that has a Department of Geology within it and sir, I can’t find one. Our department is a real gem in the College of Science & Math and we depend-Geology’s an eclectic science-we depend upon taking our roots from Physics, from Chemistry, from Biology, from Mathematics. Without those, we would not exist. And I just go on record in saying how strongly we feel about our interactions in the College of Science.

Dr. Jensen: Was that the Department of Geology, right?

Bill Hames: Department of Geology & Geography.

Dr. Jensen: It wasn’t in that original recommendation.

Bill Hames: Well, I’m very pleased to hear that, that not only is it off the table but that it never even existed…

Dr. Jensen: When the recommendation…well, let me explain…

Bill Hames: But we, well, perhaps that just shows that rumors are a terrible thing…

Dr. Jensen: When the commission met…

Bill Hames: We’ve heard quite a few. I further say to you sir, that not only am I a faculty member, but I’ve been here 11 years, I represent our college as a Research Coordinator in matters relating to intellectual properties, I’m very tied into what goes on and I’ve heard nothing about a website as others have indicated today where I could have given any input to this process but I’m thankful for the opportunity to stand here and speak with you today.

Dr. Bailey: Thank you. Bob, before I recognize you, let me ask if there is anyone else who has not yet spoken who wishes to speak? Go ahead and then Patricia.

Gene Hill, Chair-Chemistry/Biochemistry: I was here when the original split was made to move Biological Sciences out of Agriculture. I just want to say that it seems to me that the focus today in Sciences is for interaction between the various disciplines. The barriers have just disappeared and so all of Chemistry and Biochemistry now is interacting with Biology and Biology and Physics and Mathematics all have an important part together and I think we have it just where it needs to be at Auburn today and I think we need to leave it there.

Dr. Bailey: Patricia?

Patricia Duffy, Secretary: Of course, as a member of the College of Agriculture, I’m very interested in the financial problems with the experiment station and the cooperative extension system and I understand exactly what you’re talking about, about the cannibalism of positions. I’ve seen it. But what I would like to ask you is how the institute concept could address the financial problems facing the College of Agriculture.

Dr. Jensen: We are, Patricia, we are what we deliver and in fact, our dollars today are tied up in faculty salaries, staff salaries, A&P salaries. Very few dollars are available to do what I would call issues-based programming, and the experiment station, to be able to have the, to be able to have the influence in our legislature, especially with our state legislature and to be able to have a legislative agenda with the president, we have to be delivering something to the legislature that they feel they might support in the future and maybe even add dollars to it, because we have a couple of initiatives that are legislatively based and we are putting our teams of people in front of the cameras, making sure that these teams work together to solve a problem, take advantage of an opportunity and from that experience we’re learning that we have to have set aside some dollars that will be for issues-based programming so that we maybe can convince the legislature and other sources that the work that we do is very, very extremely relevant and this isn’t all of the dollars, by any means. It is some of the dollars so that we can make sure that we are perfectly in line with what the legislature is thinking so that we will be able to get some more funding.

Dr. Bailey: Ken?

Bob Locy: I’m Bob Locy…

Dr. Bailey: Bob…I’m sorry…

Dr. Jensen: Bob… (Laughter)

Bob Locy, Steering Committee/Biological Sciences: Dr. Jensen, I want to thank you for coming and finally making this report that several people have alluded to as being somewhat sort of clandestine finally public for us to have an opportunity to comment on it. I think it’s important that that process be opened up that way and I want to thank you for doing that. I also think probably among people in the Biological Sciences, I can make a statement that is relevant to clarifying some of this, I hope, which is that I have a number of colleagues with which I work very closely and collaborate with in research projects within the College of Agriculture and to be really honest, one of the reasons that I’m so upset that there has been such limited faculty input to the process that you’ve conducted so far, is the fact that I certainly would like to prosier of those opportunities, in fact, I’d like to see us find a way to build a much stronger program in Basic Plant Sciences on this campus. I came here 13 ½ years ago and I could actually have to take my shoes off to start counting the number of people that we’ve lost in Basic Plant Sciences, positions that we’ve lost as a result of the present situation in the College of Agriculture and the College of Science & Math. So I think perhaps maybe you can comment on perhaps whether that wasn’t part of the reason why the commission might have or maybe you can comment on what the rationale for even proposing that Biology would move into the College of Agriculture was because to be really honest with you, I think there are needs that need to be addressed and I hope that whatever plan we finally get to addresses how we can work together better as two colleges or whatever adjustments have to be made to make something that works better for you and works better for us, but I think that the approach that was proposed and frankly a lack of information about what exactly being proposed has created a tremendously negative reaction and I’d really like to urge you to keep working on finding a way to get something that is workable and that we can build Plant Sciences back on this campus to something we’d all be proud of instead of watching it atrophy away and having several of us standing around deciding, flipping a coin over who is going to be the one who shuts the lights off as the last person here.

Dr. Jensen: You have really good points. You know, extension has lost 200 people over the last-Gaines? I guess Gaines is here, yes-over the last decade or two decades and the experiment station is in the same situation. We do have a future and we’ve got to build programs back. The, I’m trying to think, one of the things that, the commission moved on the idea of moving programs around and in fact, when they made that recommendation, the president was there and they instructed him ‘Please get with the deans to be able to discuss this.’ Before the President could have a, before we could get the deans in a room on a schedule with the president, somehow all of this material was out there before we could have a productive discussion about it and that’s what happened. And we weren’t trying to discuss anything behind anybody’s back; we wanted to have a discussion and that’s what they in fact asked the president to do with the deans that might be affected. Now, as far as the, let me see, the other comment that you made was, oh, then really as time went on, as I said there was an evolutionary process, the idea of the institute came up and really the thought is that that institute provides that umbrella and there really is no need to move departments around or colleges or anything around when you have this umbrella that brings people together.

Bob Locy: I think that’s really good to hear, because I hadn’t heard that before, either. And you know, I mean, the problem, just as a follow up, Conner, I’m sorry, the problem it seems to me is that those of us who have been in, for example, in Plant Sciences, the experiment station funding as you point out has been atrophying away and maybe has been in jeopardy of being lost completely and when the funding atrophies away, the opportunity to promote interaction completely disappears. So if this institute will take on that role and start providing us an opportunity, I think you have a bunch of people here who would be more than happy to collaborate and continue to work to help build the College of Agriculture. It’s just that what happened didn’t offer us the opportunity to offer some input about what might be the best way to do it.

Dr. Bailey: Graeme?

Graeme Lockaby, Associate Dean of Research, School of Forestry & Wildlife Sciences: John, just one question if you could clarify something, I may have just misunderstood something you said. Was there an indication in your presentation that there might still be discussion about merging the administration of the College of Ag and Forestry & Wildlife Sciences?

Dr. Jensen: All I said was that the College of Ag is already merged with the experiment station. It’s already the same people doing the finance, the HR, everything. But the School of Forestry & Wildlife Sciences has its own system. It’s never been discussed nor is there any need to discuss until you all have input into this process, if there is a process like that. It’s not something, there’s no takeover or anything like that, and it’s just a matter of wondering how you will want in your school, your administration to be involved in the future, if there is a future for this institute idea.

Graeme Lockaby: Thank you.

Tony Moss: I just wanted to put a personal spin on this. I came here 12 years ago. I was put into a temporary laboratory facility which was quite frankly, a pit and that was just recently taken care of by a tremendous influx of money and a lot of resolve on the part of several of us who are located in that building. That building has since been enormously renovated and is now being used to house an excellent collection as part of the museum. I have to tell you that it was tremendously empowering to be able to come back together to the department that I thought I was joining, physically I would be able to more easily interact with my colleagues on a day-to-day basis, pretty much what I expected 12 years ago and it was enormously de-energizing to see the possibility of a disruption like this taking place. Now I realize that it wouldn’t necessarily have been physically relocated, but just the concept of having to rework some interdepartmental operations again is a difficult thing to consider and that’s why I think you’re seeing such a strong response here. This is my personal take on it but I know that there are several of us who are affected similarly. I’m sure you feel the same way. Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate very much your coming.

Dr. Bailey: Cindy…

Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: You recognized me as being from the Department of Pathology earlier, well, I’ve taken my stethoscope out and this horse is not dead, and the reason that it’s not dead, I believe, is because of a comment that Dr. Richardson made in answer to a question that Bob Locy asked. And I don’t have exactly the quote here but I want to interject that we ought to be concerned. Bob asked whether the Board would be asked to approve specific recommendations at their June meeting I believe, and Bob said ‘Would one of those recommendations involve the Agriculture reorganization?’ Dr. Richardson responded ‘Not at that meeting.’ He said, and this was interesting, he said that Board policy allows him, the president, to form institutes without Board approval, which made me wonder if that isn’t part of the strategy here. Then he went on, he said he would not be making recommendations regarding other colleges merging, except for Ag and Forestry at the June meeting. Now that to me, if I heard that correctly, suggests that he is planning to make a recommendation regarding the merger of Agriculture and Forestry.

Dr. Jensen: It’s good for the record, but did the Foresters; I’d like to ask did the Foresters hear that? Or the Ag people? Did I hear it that way? Because that was early on. Dr. Richardson was quoted in newspapers that it was a merger that was going to occur and certainly I think we’ve dealt with that all along and did anybody else hear it that way?

Rik Blumenthal, Chemistry/Biochemistry: I think I heard exactly what Cindy, or very much along the lines of what Cindy said, that the president did say that except for Ag and Forestry & Wildlife. So that again, for those who that effects directly, that may not be as dead a horse. That horse is very much alive and kicking.

Dr. Jensen: May I say something? He’s indicated all along that that is not going to occur, that there is going to be a separate dean of the School of Forestry & Wildlife Sciences and a separate dean of the College of Agriculture or School of Agriculture, but that’s what I’ve learned from him all along; there’s never been any change.

Rik Blumenthal: I have no vision for where the School of Agriculture is going to go or may go or needs to go. I wish the College of Agriculture to do well, because as each college in this university does well, it benefits everyone else in every other college. But I did want to add this little anecdote, just a personal anecdote. I took my children to the Vet School Open House and a very nice sophomore showed us through, showed us all the facilities at the Vet School and as we were breaking up, this couple asked the Vet Student ‘Well, what do you major in?’ and she said ‘I majored in Biology’ and she said, and the people asked ‘You want to be a veterinarian? Why didn’t you do something in Agriculture?’ and she answered ‘If I didn’t get into Vet School, I didn’t want to be in agriculture for the rest of my life.’ Now, that’s an image problem that agriculture has to face and figure out how it’s going to solve itself, solve it. I can tell you that Recommendation #6, change all your names, it’s not going to fool anybody. The students will still know where they’re going and what type of jobs they’re preparing to do and I don’t know where the future lies in how to make this unit more successful financially or how to save the extension programs but, simply changing names, creating an institute bureaucracy above the deans’ offices is not going to make it more efficient. Changing the names is not going to make it more attractive to the students. Moving Biology into Agriculture will chase this young lady right out of going to the Department of Biology. She will then become a chemist or a pre-health person in search of going to Vet School and not join the Department of Biology because, you know, this is anecdote, a point to make.

Dr. Jensen: I appreciate those comments. We’re looking for all kinds of comments and ideas.

Dr. Bailey: Before I call upon my colleague Art Chappelka, I will note that it’s approximately 5:20. I’m really proud to see all of these people here who are obviously very interested. John, this shows you the level of commitment the faculty here have to the university and also the importance of what you are responsible for guiding us in, so that’s another way of saying that if you have pertinent and new information, please go to the microphone, otherwise, I’ll take Art’s question and any others that are at the microphones and we’ll then adjourn soon after. Art, please.

Art Chappelka, Forestry & Wildlife Sciences: I’m not a senator. John, we really do appreciate you coming here and taking these questions. Couple questions and I’ll try to make them brief, only about what, three or four hours, Conner, something like that. One question is, we’ve talked about this institution idea or whatever and I know sometimes our president, you can’t speak for the president, but you know, sometimes he says things maybe from the hip and things like that, but I was aware that he gave a talk in front of about 300-400 people in Clanton, and things like that, and he kinda talked about this institute idea and it was sort of a done deal. The other thing and I think it’s for, I heard the word mergers and things like that, but Conner you have the record and you can see that as far as the School of Forestry & Wildlife Sciences, but I think that when you’ve had interactions with us, it’s not necessarily been like that. I did hear the president say that and if he didn’t, he may have been misquoted.

Dr. Jensen: Was that recently?

Art Chappelka: Well, that was in this talk he did. Now I thought he said merger, but I could be wrong on that and might be me, but that is in the record and could be looked at. But the thing you would like to comment on is the meeting in Clanton in front of the 300 people?

Dr. Jensen: I don’t know anything about it….

Art Chappelka: They talked about the institute.

Dr. Jensen: When it was, where it was, or anything. I’m sorry; he’s made a lot of comments about the institute. In fact, I was at an Alpha Gamma Rho Foundation Founders’ Day recently and he made a comment about the institute as something that he thought was viable. But he’s made comments all along, it’s always, as long as I’ve been associated with it, a separate School of Forestry and separate College of Agriculture, but there were words up front that somebody recorded that said merger.

Bill Hames, Geology & Geography: I’m not a senator. When I spoke a moment ago about being from Geology & Geography, it almost appears that you had a bit of a quizzical look on your face and you seemed to comment that Geology is really not part of the plan, but as I whispered with a few of my colleagues, it was, there may have been a presentation given somewhere, perhaps on this campus, where our department was mentioned and so I just wish to ask you again, do you have a recollection or a position on what might have been talked about in that regard?

Dr. Jensen: Yes, I do and in fact, you just mentioned it. You abbreviated the name of the department. Geology wasn’t the discussion nor was discussion about Geography. GISGPS-that’s where the discussion started and it didn’t go any farther than that.

Bill Hames: That clarifies the point. Thank you.

Dr. Bailey: Thank you very much. If there are no further questions…Paul, were you about to ask a question? No. Did we…then I will thank Dr. Jensen very much and we look forward to continued open interaction and I think we can trust John for that.

Any old business to come before this body? Any new business to come before this body? Then I entertain a motion to adjourn. Seconded. All in favor say aye. All opposed, stay here. Thank you very much.